


Good Luck With Being Happy

by LilacSolanum



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Anxiety, Depression, F/M, Gen, Hollywood Marco, Jake Hates Loud Noises, Jake Loves Ikea, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 03:42:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9639332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilacSolanum/pseuds/LilacSolanum
Summary: AKA Six Times Marco Set Jake Up On A Date; AKA The Hollywood Marco Dairies; AKA Jake Loves Naps; AKA One Time Marco And Jake Went On One Big Long Date Called Friendship.





	1. Part I

**ANA**

Two weeks ago, Marco told me to write a book. He brought it up an hour into our dinner, which I was mostly enjoying. Marco invites me to dinners at least once a week and if I didn’t accept one invite out of every ten, the phone calls just got more frequent. It wasn’t all that bad, I guess. I always ended up having an okay time as long as he took me somewhere quiet.

He’d brought it up so organically that I didn’t realize I was getting played. He started talking about movie deals that were coming in for _The Gorilla Speaks_ , and how he didn’t want to sell the rights because he was honestly proud of the book. He said that only thing he regretted was not talking about some of the darker aspects of being an Animorph, that he felt he had to keep it light to help alleviate the tension after the Invasion, and how he’d wished he’d spent more time accenting _everyone’s_ bravery and not just his own. I started nodding and he leaned forward, digging into how that was the sort of book America expected from _me_ , how healing and wonderful it would be for people to read, and how I could remind everyone about Tobias and Rachel. I remember saying something like “Yeah, I wish people would talk about them more.”

Since then, he’d sent me a tape recorder and instructed me to record my musings on the war. He’d sent me a few writing samples of potential co-authors. He’d shopped around publishers on my behalf. I still hadn’t technically agreed to do it, but that didn’t seem to mean much to Marco. Marco had decided I was writing a book. Sure, I could fight him if I wanted, but eventually, somehow, he was going to get me to write a book.

A few days ago, I got a message that I myself, Marco, and a publisher had a meeting at 8:00 PM on Friday, a meeting I did not ask for nor want to attend. According to Marco, the publisher was ready to offer me “An _insane_ deal. Like, truly bonkers. Ever want your own island? Accept this book deal. You’ll have enough money to buy five new islands, try ‘em all out, then choose one and let the other four get all creepy and haunted. Real, serious money. This is _way_ better than my deal.” I told him I don’t buy much besides groceries and he launched into a five minute bit about buying so many boxes of Lucky Charms I could build shelters and end homelessness. I told him I didn’t like Lucky Charms.

Only, I was starting to think the money wouldn’t be so bad. I had a lot of money now, sure, but I knew I needed to move out and I didn’t want to leave my parents alone in this house. That meant buying two new places. Building rather than buying, really, when it came to my parents, because I wanted my mom to have her dream kitchen and my dad to finally have his own office. My parents deserved a complete restart more than anyone in the world. They should have fresh furniture with no formula stains. New cupboards without etchings from two sons that realized forks made marks just like crayons. A TV with a remote that wasn’t missing the volume-up button because of a few too many battles over viewing choices.

They should have a house without the room none of us ever go in, the room none of us will ever go in. A room full of dusty teen clutter that used to belong to a Yeerk and, before that, to a brother.

Besides, it was kind of weird living among the ruins of Santa Barbara. Our subdivision didn’t get hit too bad, but some places nearby were completely gone. The city was rebuilding itself, slowly, but other neighborhoods weren’t nearly as wrecked, and we should seek out homes there. We should all live somewhere without dracon burn marks every three feet.

So I agreed. I said yes. I put on a business casual outfit— at least, I think it was business casual. I didn’t wear jeans, but I also didn’t wear a tie. Dress codes confuse me. The clothes were a little snug, making them that much more uncomfortable to wear. I haven’t exactly been physical activity guy lately.

I walked into the restaurant and gave the host Marco’s name. The host played it very cool, responding to me with a perfect mix of “I know you’re just a person” and “I recognize your great work.” He’d probably had a lot of practice, working in Los Angeles. I wasn’t the first “celebrity” he’d ever met.

He walked me toward a table in a corner, away from everyone else. Marco knew my preferences well. He hadn’t arrived yet, which was pretty normal. He would sometimes make all these complicated choices about punctuality. Waltzing in late might be some kind of move he was making to show the publisher who was really in control. He’d also scheduled the meeting well into the evening, which I thought was kind of weird, but maybe Marco had a reason. Marco was really into all that corporate power play stuff. I guess it was one way to use a brilliant strategic mind outside of guerrilla warfare.

There was someone already sitting at the table. She didn’t seem like much of a publishing agent. She was young, too young, practically my age, and was really attractive in a Seventeen magazine kind of way. You know, blonde hair piled on the top of her head. Butterfly clips. Big blue eyes. Basically, traditional sort of Barbie-pretty thing every other wannabe actress in L.A. sported. It’s not the sort of look I normally seek out, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t work for me at all.

She was wearing some kind of dress. Black, spaghetti straps.

Something told me that wasn’t business casual.

My eyes narrowed. At that moment, my phone rang.

I tapped the host’s shoulder. “I see my party,” I said. “I’ll join her in a minute. I’m just going to take this call.”

The host nodded and left. I made a beeline for the first semi-private spot I could find, a short hallway that lead to the kitchen. I answered my phone.

“What the hell-”

“Change of plans, Jake-man. I’m stuck in traffic. By the time I get there, the whole thing’s gonna be over. I’m just going to head home.”

“Uh-huh. Can’t pull over somewhere, morph, and be here in five minutes?”

“No such luck! It’s bumper-to-bumper back here. Can’t just abandon my car on the highway, man, they don’t really like that. Don’t worry, Ana is very capable. Real smart girl. She’ll take care of everything. You’ll like her.”

“Sure. Marco, what is this?”

“A business meeting! Just don’t bring up, you know, the book, or any other kind of business, she won’t know what you’re talking about. It’s an alternative kind of business meeting. Safe topics include: cute anecdotes about your childhoods, your opinions on the new Spiderman movies, or asking her why she moved to L.A. That’s always a good one. Really gets the girls talking.”

“Did you seriously just trick me into a _date_?”

“Hey, push up your sleeves. Show off your arms. They’re your best asset.”

“How do you know I’m wearing long sleeves — you have a thought-speak capable palm pilot, don’t you.”

“I like toys, what can I say. These things aren’t even available to humans yet. Ax has the hook-up.”

“You’re in morph.”

“Why would I be in morph?”

“You’re in morph, right now, at this restaurant.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Dude, you have a piece of hair going across your part, you better fix that.”

“Where are you, Marco.”

“In my car. Traffic. It’s a bitch.”

“Marco. Demorph and get in here. Now.”

“Oh no, I’m in a tunnel! Kkkssshhh kkkssshhh,” said Marco, clearly imitating the sound of a breaking up phone with his own thought-speak voice. Our connection broke.

I heard a tapping on a nearby window. An owl looked right at me with its piercing yellow eyes, holding a thin piece of expensive looking tech in its talons. I flicked it off. It flew away.

I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against the window, momentarily forgetting my status as some kind of hero people immediately recognized. The window sent a chill through my rapidly heating body. Everything inside me was going haywire, all systems in overdrive. My mouth was watery, I was shaking, and my heart was jackhammering its way out of my chest.

I would have stayed there all night if someone hadn’t come up to tap me on the shoulder. “Jake Berenson?”

I turned around and tried to give her my best smile. She was young, really young, with babyfat in her cheeks and braces on her teeth. As much as I didn’t like being perceived as important, I also never liked brushing people off, especially not kids. We took a picture with her palm pilot that was way more technologically advanced than mine. People taking pictures of themselves was such a huge thing now that I guess they were making palms with the camera on the front. Crazy.

It brought me out of my own thoughts enough that my body somehow moved itself back to where Ana sat. She was typing something on her palm. She looked up when I arrived and smiled at me brightly, like my presence was a huge surprise. I could almost feel waves of relief radiating from her. She must have seen me see her and turn away, and my stomach sank as I imagined myself in her shoes. That had probably freaked her out a lot and gave her the totally wrong picture about me.

I swallowed.

“I, uh — Sorry,” I said, muttering. “Someone wanted a picture.”

I immediately regretted saying that. Was there a worse way to come off? Sorry, cute and sweet-seeming girl. I’m just too famous to walk ten feet from the door to a table without getting stopped. Did you know I’m a hero?

Thankfully, she just giggled. “Don’t worry! I get that too.”

“You do?” I asked, honestly confused and interested, before I realized how _that_ also was not the right response. She was apparently successful and I’d basically just said ‘And who are you?’ It made me look like I thought I was too important for her. I grabbed the nearby glass of water and sucked most of it down in two gulps.

Again, she dealt with me with grace. She laughed. “It’s okay! No one really recognizes me unless they have kids or little siblings. I’ve got a gig on Nickelodeon. Maybe it’s not the most exposure, but it’s steady work and I really like my co-workers. No worries!”

I liked that she was humble about having the sort of job of which most girls her age only dream. I liked that she had positive things to stay about her co-workers. I liked her smile and her kind eyes. I should have told her that. I should have relaxed and asked her about her show.

I didn’t.

What I _did_ do was empty my water, set it at the edge of the table so an employee could easily see I wanted more, and stare down at the table. I think I mumbled something like “Yeah. That sounds fun.”

We spent the next hour like that. Ana was engaging, entertaining, and really quite wonderful. I started to wonder why Marco didn’t just keep her around for himself, but then again, Marco always went for the girls with more beauty than brains. He didn’t exactly like being challenged in his relationships, and Ana would be the sort of girl to call Marco out on his shit. She’d do it gently and with a smile, but she’d do it. Maybe I needed that kind of girl, too.

During our meal she managed to smooth over all my silence and awkwardness with an endless supply of cute and funny stories that never fell flat or got boring. She basically just talked at me for an hour without faltering, once, or making the situation seem weird. She was good person.

I gave her a sort of half-hug when we left, which seemed to surprise her, but I thought it was what she wanted.

I called her the next morning. I think I did it out of duty more than anything else. I knew I hadn’t been the most likable guy during the whole dinner. It went straight to voice-mail and I never heard from her again. It was for the best.

Marco _did_ call me, however, and I did answer, and I had a few choice words for him.

**LILY**

Two weeks later, Marco set me up on a second date. It was my fault. I made the mistake of expressing an opinion about a woman.

We were at a ribbon cutting ceremony. I get invited to things like this pretty much every day, to the point where I have a guy who goes through the requests and separates out the chaff for me. It’s kind of weird, saying things like “I have a guy,” but you need so many different people to handle different things when the nation knows who you are. Everyone — I mean everyone — wants your attention, and it gets so that you can’t really sort through everything on your own, unless you want to go completely crazy. Believe me. I’ve tried.

I normally don’t accept any invitations, really. I always ended up feeling awkward and trapped. This one was pretty cool, though. We were celebrating a headquarters for the partnership between the Andalites and Focus. It was crazy to think that Focus grew out of Cinnabon, of all things. The Andalites originally contacted Cinnabon looking for, well, cinnamon buns, but what they found was a smart and savvy CEO with a good heart and a sharp mind. She and the Andalites had the same goals for Earth’s future in clean energy and, together, they were changing production habits everywhere. The Andalites were invested in humans becoming prosperous and not completely obliterating our own planet. They said it was due to an appreciation for the human arts, as if we were some charity case for them, but the truth was kind of obvious. Humans were growing, rapidly, and we would catch up to the Andalites soon. They’d rather have us as allies than embittered enemies.

It really did warm me to see Earth change so positively after the war. Warm enough to want to celebrate a little, at least. This headquarters had a lot of meaning and symbolism for positive post-Invasion politics and it was a really big deal. So big that all three of us were attending.

There were a lot of news teams at the ceremony. A lot. More than needed to be, but that’s just kind of a side effect of the remaining Animorphs appearing together. A lot of them were shouting at us, all at once, as if we could manage to pick out one person among the gaggle and make sense of anything. We were told mostly to ignore them, but sometimes Marco stepped forward and played verbal volleyball with the crowd.

We stood around for almost two hours, waiting for everything to finish setting up. Marco sent his stylist to me to do something to me hair that I really didn’t like, then gave me a different shirt that somehow fit me perfectly. Where Marco got my measurements I don’t even want to know. She also insisted I wear some kind of watch from a brand I think Marco was sporting, too. He kept adjusting the watch, then pushing his hair back with his watch arm while angled at a camera. He must have some kind of under the table brand deal, the kind where Marco didn’t really do ads or commercials but was still paid a lot of money just to show off the product in everyday life. I was annoyed, but I didn’t really care enough to take it off.

The stylist tried to do something to Cassie, too, but Cassie gave her one of her death-glares until the stylist went back to Marco, defeated. Cassie had really mastered the art of the non-verbal shut downs since becoming a politician. She could make anyone wither away to nothingness with just a glance. She was more effective at removing enemies in one shot than even the most advanced shredder.

The preparations really started to bore me. I didn’t think the whole thing would take this long. In the past, I would have joked around with Marco or had an engaging conversation with Cassie, but none of us were like that anymore. Marco was busy being our spokesperson and Cassie was constantly on her palm, working multiple jobs all at once, like a juggler in a sensible blouse. My eyes started to wander through the crowd, looking for something to distract me from my thoughts. They settled on a girl walking toward a few of the politicians, holding a carrier tray full of coffees. She was soft-looking and real. She had big brown eyes and hair that was too wild to be tamed into a ponytail. Bits of it had escaped and curled over her face and she kept blowing strands of her hair out of her eyes. It was really endearing.

Marco appeared next to me so suddenly that I half thought he morphed flea and demorphed silently behind me. “Penny for your thoughts?” he asked with a half-cocked grin.

I was completely trapped. I had been looking at a girl and Marco knew. I moved my eyes toward Cassie without moving my head at all, trying to hide the glance from him. She was going over some documents with someone, distracted. I nodded toward the assistant, who was now passing out her coffees. “She’s cute,” I said.

Marco looked at me, then looked at the girl. “Alright,” he said, as if he were filing away some vital piece of information for a later date. “The sexy librarian thing. I get it. Hey, Jake,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. This just happened to be the same hand with the watch, which he made sure was visible to the cameras that had started flashing madly as soon as Marco started talking to me. I rolled my eyes, but I didn’t say anything. “You don’t need to check in with her if you’re interested in someone. It’s been a year and a half. She’s cool. You were both kids. No one ever ends up with their high school sweethe-”

“I know,” I said, jerking away from him.

That was a mistake.

The media really loves a story about inner Animorph relationships and I’d just publicly flinched away from Marco.

The flashes went crazy and the sounds of a hundred shutters going off at once pierced my ears, all at once, like a thousand tiny needles pushing into my skull. I shut my eyes tightly. The flashes, the sounds —

It wasn’t, exactly, like the blue flashes of dracon beams, but it was enough to remind me.

My breath started squeaking out in shallow pieces, air struggling toward my constricted lungs.

I could hear Marco quietly talking from somewhere distant. “Hey. Hey. It’s just cameras, Jake. Just cameras. They’re recording us. You gotta relax or step inside. Jake. Hey. _Jake_. Do you need to go inside?”

I felt myself shake my head. I opened up my eyes. Smiled at Marco. “No. No. I’m fine.”

Marco looked me up and down. Over his shoulder I could see Cassie staring at me with her sweet, open, honest face. She always had beautiful, giant eyes, eyes that took up most of her face, and they only grew more beautiful with age.

Marco saw where I was looking and sighed. “Okay. What we’re going to do is hug, and hope that makes a better headline than you pushing at me. Animorphs acting like siblings, playing around, being affectionate, that kind of thing. And then, Jacob Berenson, I am _going_ to get you laid. You gotta let her go, man.”

“I have,” I mumbled as Marco wrapped his arms around me.

“Sure,” said Marco. “That sounded just as convincing as this hug must look.”

 

Marco was true to his word. Three days later I got a text from him. All it said was “7:00 PM, next Friday, dinner at Opal, I know you’re not doing anything. Reservation is under your name. Hers is Lily Riveria. Hobbies include scrapbooking, photography, and nights out with ‘the girls’. Sounds boring. You’ll like her.”

I went. Maybe it was because I hadn’t gotten Cassie’s eyes out of my mind. Or the way her hand felt against mine, when we chastely shook hands in greeting. Or the sound of her voice, asking me if everything was okay.

Maybe it was because Marco failed to give me any kind of contact information for Lily, meaning I either had to show up, stand the poor girl up completely, or try to tell Marco ‘no’. Ever since he became an A-list celebrity you had to carefully pick your battles with him. I guess dinner with a cute girl wasn’t the worst thing he could want. At least this time I knew it was a date beforehand.

That Friday night, I got ready, and made sure I was on time. I ordered some kind of fancy soda with strawberries and basil that tasted more like lightly flavored carbonated water than anything I recognized as “soda.” I mean, when you order a strawberry soda, it should be bright pink and have strawberry flavor, right? It wasn’t very good.

She showed up ten minutes late and looked totally different. At first, I thought she was a completely new girl, like Marco had tricked me again into dating another Hollywood Barbie. Her hair was completely straight, now. I don’t even know how girls do that, have curly hair one day and straight hair the next like it was nothing more than changing clothes. I guessed she had on some pretty heavy make-up. I mean, her whole face looked so different from the day at the ribbon cutting that it must have been a lot. She was wearing this silvery dress that made sure to accent her breasts which, yeah, were really great, but were a lot in a dress that low cut. I felt like they were yelling at me. All her softness was gone. She was all straight lines and sleek silver, like she’d become some kind of evil version of herself in one of the sci fi shows Marco and I used to watch. She probably thought it was what I wanted to see. It was definitely a look, and one I really appreciate when I’m in that sort of mood, but it wasn’t what I was expecting.

She looked like she was waiting for me to make the first move. Stand up and hug her. Shake her hand. Something. Anything. I was too shocked by her complete change of appearance to do much. She kind of floundered for a moment and looked pretty lost, so I jerked forward without any real idea of what I was planning to do, but then she slid into the booth.

She smiled at me with teeth so white that they looked like fresh paint. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Lily. Its nice to meet you.” She held out a hand. Her nails were long and really, really blue.

I shook her hand and said. “I’m Jake Berenson.”

Lily kind of nodded and giggled, like it was weird of me to introduce myself. Sometimes people did that. What else was I supposed to do? I’ve overheard Marco just list an achievement, one of the weirder ones to seem halfway humble, like “Oh, hello Samantha, I’m Tiger Beat’s #1 Summer Bod 2001,” but I can’t really pull that off. Plus, I don’t really know where I land on lists and stuff like that. I don’t even think I made that Summer Bod one.

“Um,” I said, staring down at my strawberry-basil soda. I swirled it around with the straw. “Thanks for coming out to see me.”

She leaned forward, her eyes going wide. “You’re thanking me? Oh my god, please don’t! I —” She leaned back in her chair and bit her lip, breathing in deeply. My stomach sank. I knew what was coming next.

“Um, my dad — he’s a politician. Representative Carlos Riveria, California 24th Congressional District. Kind of a big deal. Total Yeerk target. He- he was a Controller. Almost since the beginning. I didn’t know for a really long time, but as I got older, I don’t know. I started suspecting something was weird.”

She kept talking. I kept staring down at my soda, running my thumb through the condensation on the glass, making meaningless patterns. I hated this. I hated hearing everyone’s personal stories and how grateful they were to me, like I had personally swooped down and scooped the Yeerk out of their loved one’s head.

They didn’t get it. It wasn’t about anyone else’s parent or child or sibling or best friend or lover.

It was about my brother.

And because I couldn’t end the war sooner, my brother was gone, him and my cousin and the Auxiliaries and Doubleday’s men and so many Taxxons. Them, and countless human hosts who died and never made it back home.

The world got fuzzy at the edges, like my body was blocking reality from me, like it was trying to remove me from time. Lily was still talking and, somewhere, the sounds from her throat landed on my ears but my brain understood none of it.

I pushed myself out of the booth. “I’m sorry. I’m — I’m sorry.”

I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. I was shaking. My bones felt like they’d been replaced by electric wires.

I noticed the strawberry-basil soda. How much had it been? Five dollars? Seven? I couldn’t remember.

“Are you okay?” Lily asked, sounding distant even though she had gotten up to stand right next to me. She put a hand on my shoulder and I flinched. She drew her hand back quickly, as if she’d accidentally set it on a hot stove.

“I just — that. I need to pay for that.”

I didn’t have any cash. I pulled out the first credit card I saw and threw it on the table. “I’m really sorry,” I told Lily, and then I left, not looking back.

Marco called me the next morning. I answered, even if I didn’t want to talk to anyone. At least I’d calmed down by then. I felt like I always did, but now there was a heavy cloud of embarrassment, too.

“So, how’d it go?” he asked. I could hear his grin through the phone. Why did Marco always have so much energy?

“I’m sure you already know,” I said. “There’s no way you didn’t have some kind of spy watching me.”

“You know, I honestly didn’t,” said Marco. “I trust you to make good choices and bang hot ladies. It was a done deal man, I could tell. She was practically drooling when I asked if she was a available to spend an evening with The Great Jacob Berenson. Pretty much written in the stars. Bada bing, bada _bone_. You didn’t fuck it up, did you Jake?”

I hesitated.

“Oh my god. You fucked it up.”

“I-”

“Just tell me how you managed to drop the ball _this_ time so I can feel awed and amazed.”

“Right as she sat down I felt suddenly sick. Like, really sick. The kind of sick where you can’t really be more than five feet away from your bathroom. I ran out of there. I left my card, though. I hope she got herself something. I didn’t say she could, but —”

“Wait. You ran out of a restaurant and left your _credit card_ behind?”

“Yeah?”

“Just blindly trusting in the kindness of Lily, the employees, and every stranger in eyesight?”

“I see now where I’ve made a mistake.”

“Yeah. Call the bank.”

“Okay.”

“And Jake?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you really have the runs? Or did you freak out for some other reason?”

“No. I was sick.”

“Listen, you can’t-”

“I need to cancel the card.”

I hung up on him. He called back. I didn’t answer.

Someone spent almost $2000 of my money. I didn’t really dispute it or fight the charges. I could afford it and I’m sure they deserved some nice things.

**TRICIA**

The next time Marco made me have lunch with a woman, it wasn’t, technically, a date, but it was still something I didn’t want to do.

“Her name is Tricia Kwon and she really wants to meet you,” he said, sounding legitimately stressed. It surprised me, honestly. Hollywood not only fed into the showmanship aspects of Marco’s personality, but the calculating ones, too. Everything he said had some sort of controlled purpose and it was pretty rare to see him frazzled and earnest. “You’ve got to do it. Just sit down, eat good food, and listen to her blather on about whoever in her life was an ex-host and how great you are or whatever it is that makes her want to talk with you. It’ll take forty-five minutes. An hour, tops. I’ll get you guys a res at anywhere you want to go. What are you into these days? Italian? Vietnamese? It’s all on me. Just give me forty-five minutes.”

I rubbed at my temples. I’d had this tension headache for almost three days now. I kept my room dimly lit and had taken Advil after Advil but it just wouldn’t let up. I really didn’t want to do this. I hated meeting people. It was hard to meet their expectations.

“I don’t know—”

“Come on. Please. I need her on my side. Hollywood is art and commerce, Big Jake, and art and commerce go together like oil and water. The commerce people fuck up the art and the art people fuck up the commerce. Tricia? She can phase between both worlds, my friend. She’s like a Hollywood Seer. One born to every generation. She lets the artist make the art and still manages to make buckets of money for the fatcat. I want her to go to bat for me on this new TV show. I want it to be actually good. Like, really good. If this thing gets panned then I won’t get back on the silver screen for a long time. It’s not a date. It’s not anything. Just lunch.”

I don’t think it needed to be this complicated for Marco. He wasn’t just an A-list celebrity — he was a war hero. Marco could ask for the pyramids to be relocated to his backyard and no one would question the order, they would just bring out the freight trucks. Marco liked the game of it all a little too much. He liked pretending it was way more complicated than it needed to be.

“I really don’t feel well,” I said. “Really. My head—”

“I got you a _legendary_ book deal, Jake,” he said, his tone growing cold. It’d gotten to the point where he was whipping out the guilt trip. “I helped you find a contractor for your parents and a real estate agent for yourself.”

“I didn’t ask for any of that.”

“But you didn’t refuse it.”

I sighed. I pushed myself up in bed and rubbed at my eyes. I knew if I didn’t agree, and agree now, that Marco was going to dig deeper and get personal. The pain in my temples throbbed.

“Okay,” I said. “Fine. Just tell me when and where.”

“Great,” said Marco flatly. “Thanks.” He hung up his phone.

I met Tricia in three days time at a cute little outdoor cafe. It was noon and still sunny outside, so it really did feel like just a get together and not exactly a first date. Besides, she was way older than me. Maybe late twenties, early thirties. She had a certain air about her, a come-at-me stance in her posture. Her aura practically dared people to tell her who to be or what to do. She reminded me of Cassie, a little.

We exchanged small talk while waiting for our meals. I asked her what she did, about what it was like working with Marco. She asked me about the war and what my life has been like lately. I actually have answers keyed up for these moments. I’ve even practiced a few stories about the war in front of the mirror so I can tell them easily and with levity, instead of getting gummed up on the detail. Sometimes I would start focusing a little too hard on Rachel’s sadism or would ramble about how stupid a certain decision was in hindsight. That tended to make people uncomfortable. No one really liked it when we were flawed humans.

Our food came. We ate and things fell a little silent, which meant one of two things. Either Tricia was very hungry and really wanted to finish her meal, or she was gearing up to give me a speech about how the Animorphs had saved her or a loved one. At least I was prepared for it this time.

She surprised me. When we were done with our food, she folded her hands together, placed them on the table, and leaned forward toward me. Her eyes glittered with a hard and cold purpose, like Marco’s did when he was figuring out a piece of particularly tricky strategy. I guess she would have that same ability. Marco was playing the Hollywood game because it suited him, because he wanted to, and because it made him feel useful. Tricia Kwon played because she had to play. She was a relatively young, Asian, and a woman. The odds of success were stacked against her a mile high. In order to have climbed as far up the corporate ladder as she already had, she had to have been three times more ruthless than Marco, and then some.

“I know you’re smart,” she said. She somehow pulled me into locked eye contact, almost as if she had physically grabbed my face and forced me to look at her. “I know you know this is a pitch meeting.”

“I knew it was something other than cobb salads,” I said dryly.

She studied me, nodded, and then pulled out an envelope from her briefcase.

“We can produce this,” said Tricia, lightly. “We can get big names attached, we can get funding, and we can make something good..”

She pulled a stack of papers out of the envelope and pushed it toward me.

It was a movie script.

It was titled _Tom Berenson_.

My throat constricted and my lungs shrank. The air grew thick and hazy. I pushed oxygen into myself with short, ragged breaths. Everything started to lag, as if someone had set the world in slow motion.

When I looked back up, Tricia was still staring straight into my eyes.

“Sorkin brought this to me two weeks ago. It is the most brilliant script I’ve ever read. The Animorphs story has been told by literature and cinema alike, but always with a simplistic and jingoistic tone that ignores the complicated point of view of the hosts and their Yeerks. Read this. It is sensitive and nuanced. You’ll find the portrayal of yourself to be accurate and kind.”

I didn’t response. I just looked at the pile of papers and ran my eyes over the title again and again. _Tom Berenson. Tom Berenson. Tom Berenson_.

Tricia watched me for a moment, then folded her hands elegantly in front of her. She spoke in a low, even tone. “Frankly, there is nothing to stop us from making this film. You, your family, the story of the Invasion — at this point, all of it is living mythology. Legally, you can only sue for defamation, and that’s a lot more exhausting than you think. We will make this, but we would like to make it with your input, and with your blessing. Please, lend your heart and your message. Let’s work together and make this important.”

I continued to force air into myself. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears.

Sure, I had seen the _Animorphs_ movie, and it felt false and strange. Even Marco’s book shaped our story into something it wasn’t, and that was written by an Animorph himself (sort of). I was relatively fine with all of that. I got the appeal. If people want to take my story and change it, make it sexier, more exciting, and more palatable, then fine. I don’t care.

But Tom?

I would not allow Hollywood to touch Tom.

Time went back to normal. My throat opened up. I pushed the script back toward her and stood up. Our eye contact remained but now, for whatever reason, I knew I was the one controlling it.

I drew up to my full height. She stood, immediately, to match me, to ease away my control of the situation, but she couldn’t.

I don’t like acting like some great general, but I can when it’s needed.

I spoke to Tricia in a low, quiet voice. “You will not make this movie. This project dies at this table.”

She glared at me with hard eyes. This woman didn’t like the word ‘no’. “Tom Berenson is dead. His story is up for grabs. If we all work together—”

“It’s not your story,” I said, speaking so low I was almost growling. “It’s mine.”

I left the restaurant before she could say anything else.

When I got to my car, I simply drove. I drove out of the city, and then I drove aimlessly, taking this exit and that with no destination in mind. I lost all track of time. Eventually, I turned, and found my way home.

I hadn’t even glanced at my palm while I was out. When I slid into my driveway and looked at my messages, I found that I had seven missed calls from Marco and twenty-three texts.

I turned off the device without reading or listening to anything. I said hello to my parents, and then I went straight up to my room.

**HER**

After I found out about Cassie’s boyfriend, I went on another date. This time it was all my idea.

I found out from a magazine cover, of all things. I’d seen Cassie on covers before, but rarely on something like Us Weekly. Yet, there she was, walking hand in and with some guy behind bold white letters shouting “Cassandra Gardner Finds Love!” It jumped out at me at the grocery store check out line and it went off in my mind like a bomb.

Everything inside me changed, all at once. My body set itself on fire. I shook. I felt weak. My vision blurred. The innocuous noise of the Albertsons started to dig into my skull, like someone had suddenly turned the volume up full blast.

Still, I pushed myself forward. Managed to make the appropriate responses to the cashier, even forced a brief smile when she said ‘Have a nice day.’ I rushed out of the store holding my Pop-Tarts and frozen dinners, feeling numb and electric all at once. I drove home on autopilot. I entered my home out of habit.

My parents had officially moved into their new house just a few days ago. I was still looking for a place. I kept forgetting to return my real estate agent’s calls and get the process moving. On some level, I don’t think I wanted to move out. I deserved to live here with Tom’s ghost.

Self-pity waved over me, sudden and unwanted.

See, it wasn’t just that Cassie had moved on. Of course she had. Of course she would. It was just a part of everything else, of everything that had gone so terribly wrong. She and I had liked each other before the war, everyone knew that. Rachel wouldn’t let up about it. Rachel thought it was so cute, that her cousin liked her best friend. She took every opportunity she had to make us blush over it.

You know, Marco said no one married their high school sweetheart, but some people do. Practical people who didn’t kid themselves that relationships were all passion and romance. People who knew about hard work and compromise. Cassie and I were those people. Cassie and I could have made it work.

When I was like this, all worked up and jagged inside, I couldn’t help but fall deep into a fantasy about my life without the Yeerks. It was stupid. Useless. The Yeerks came. I fought them. No one could do anything about it, except for possibly The Ellimist, who had made it very clear he was going to do shit about anything at all.

I really think she and I would have gotten together somewhere down the line. Maybe we would have gone to UCSB, graduated, got good jobs, got married. Rachel would have been her maid of honor and Tom my best man. Tom would have made some kind of speech that used every single wedding cliche, just to embarrass me. He would have taken off his tie as soon as the photos were done and immediately gotten drunk on beer. I always imagined that Tom would like beer. Rachel would have absorbed all wedding planning chaos and wouldn’t have blinked an eye. She would have yelled at lazy vendors and made sure all the guests arrived on time. She would have sat tall at the head table, knowing everyone was looking at her and, and she would have soaked it in. She liked being noticed, sometimes. She never needed it for validation like Marco, but she liked it well enough when it suited her.

I sucked in air, over and over again, feeling furious at Elfangor for stepping in and fucking up my life, and furious at the Yeerks for existing even at all.

Seventeen thousand, three hundred, seventy-two Yeerks.

Sometimes I regret it. Sometimes I feel like a monster.

Sometimes I don’t.

I felt like I was in tiger morph during battle, all coiled muscles and energy with no where to put it. I paced in a circle, either in the living room or in the kitchen. It didn’t matter. All I could see was the photo of Cassie and her new boyfriend, smiling at me from a magazine rack.

Should have been me. Always should have been me. Should have, if not for the Animorphs. If not for the war. If not for Yeerks. If not—

I flopped down on to some piece of furniture. Took out my palm pilot. Scrolled through my contacts.

I called Marco. He didn’t answer. Of course he didn’t. He was busy. He had a purpose in life. He hadn’t peaked at sixteen.

He called me back after about twenty minutes. A thread of guilt weaved into the rest of my emotions. I never returned his calls, but he made sure he hit me back, every time.

I answered. I didn’t bother with hello. “Okay, fine. You win. Get me laid. Tonight.”

“Us Weekly?” he said without missing a beat.

“Us Weekly.”

“Okay, man. I’ll pick you up around, maybe, ten?”

“You just happen to have the night off?”

“Kismet.”

“Cassie called and told you about the article and you made sure to clear your schedule on the release day.”

“This is why we don’t talk anymore. We’re all a bunch of hypervigilant soldiers who know each other way too well.”

“I don’t care. Just make it happen. Bring me to Hollywood’s biggest rager.”

“Rager? Jesus, Jake. Make sure you wear a bodacious outfit and turn up the Bon Jovi.”

“Not now, Marco.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll see you soon.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

I hung up the palm and looked at the time. 2:42 PM. I had almost seven hours before Marco would arrive. I moved myself toward the bathroom, feeling empty and deflated. I rummaged in my medicine cabinet and found sleeping pills, swallowing one without water. I normally didn’t really have trouble sleeping — admittedly, I slept way too much. It was just always nice to have something on hand for nightmare nights, or for times like these, when I just didn’t want to think anymore.

I ended up not waking up in time. Marco had to get me out of bed. At first, I was really disorientated the sound of his voice and thought we were back in the Hork-Bajir Valley. Then, I remembered where I really was. I sat up and ran my hand through my hair, my body feeling thick and hazy. My mouth was so dry it was painful. “How’d you get in?” I asked.

“Are you serious?” said Marco. “When was the last time you were locked out of anywhere? We can morph, Jake. Ever try it?”

It was then I registered he was wearing nothing but the skin-tight jean patterned leggings that had become his trademark just for this purpose. I also noticed that he had little to no muscle definition, a two-pack at best, and I felt oddly comforted. Marco may be a Hollywood big shot, but he still refused to exercise if no one made him.

“Once or twice,” I said, standing up slowly. “I need water.”

“Yeah,” said Marco. “And a maid.”

I blinked and looked around my room. It was pretty messy. There were dirty clothes and old Stouffer’s trays everywhere. “Uh,” I said, suddenly feeling embarrassed. “My mom used to come in and pick stuff up, I guess.”

“Apparently,” said Marco, dryly. “You can afford a girl, dude. Anytime. They’re not really that expensive, all things considered, unless you want to get weird and go through one of those agencies where the chicks are hot and naked which, hey, not my thing but I know where to find ‘em.”

“I’ll pass,” I said, opening my closet.

“Oh look! _There_ are your actual clothes! Your pajamas and sweatpants are all strewn across the floor, doing a lovely impression of carpeting. Very avant-garde. Tell me, who’s your interior designer. Courtney Love?”

“Okay, I get it,” I said tersely. “Let up.”

Marco shrugged and pointed at a particular shirt. “That one. Red’s your color.”

In short time, I was dressed, watered, and in Marco’s car, headed who knew where.

I was starting to regret calling him at all. Now that the initial shock was over, I was pretty much fine with Cassie and her new man. I was happy for her. Really. We’d been officially over for about two years now. It was good for her. I think I just went with Marco in some residual diphenhydramine induced haze. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Besides, Marco was in my room with me. I couldn’t flake if I wanted to. He’d just grab my arm and drag me to the party, kicking and screaming.

We fought our way through L.A. traffic, not really talking to each other much. Marco, for all he had a night off, had to take a few important phone calls, which was fine by me. I was okay with just being quiet and listening to the radio.

Marco pulled up to some insane looking gate. The security guard looked him over, nodded, and let him through without a single word exchanged.

“Come here often?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “This is Hannah’s place.”

“Hannah?” I asked. Marco sighed.

“Hannah Dubois. My girlfriend of, like, three months.”

“Oh.”

“Sure. Cassie finds a man and you have a mental breakdown. Me? Can’t even keep track of my romantic partners.”

“I thought you were still dating Lydia.”

“You either need to start calling me more or actually read Us Weekly.”

We got increasingly closer to the heart of the party, which meant music started piercing the air. I never understood the point of loud music at a get-together. Wasn’t the whole point to talk with all your friends? I started fidgeting with the edge of my shirt. Marco glanced over at me.

“You said ‘big rager’,” he said defensively, as if I had accused him of something.

“I know,” I said.

We followed a path and emerged in a big, giant open space that was more courtyard than backyard. There was an acid-blue glowing pool that was surrounded by white tiles. Palm trees were artfully planted everywhere and lit up by blue lights. The music thrummed from a DJ table located against the house proper. On the opposite side was an open bar with an actual bartender. I quickly realized that that was where Marco was taking me.

I didn’t say anything. I’ve had a bit of wine, but that was it. I didn’t really trust myself around alcohol. When all anyone does is tell you you’re a mess, you grow pretty wary of mood altering substances. Maybe I wasn’t happy, but no one could say I was unhappy and a drunk. It gave me an odd sense of satisfaction.

The music was so loud I couldn’t really hear what Marco told the bartender but, soon, I was holding something dark brown and bubbly. I looked at him sideways, then took a sip. It was like drinking Coke, but with a biting and fiery finish. I almost coughed, but I kept it together.

Marco glanced at me sideways. “Too strong?” he asked, yelling over the music.

I just shrugged, then drank some more.

“Jack and Coke,” he said. I nodded.

I motioned toward his drink. It was clear and had olives. “What did you get?”

“Martini, Hendrick’s, extra dirty, stirred,” he said. He grinned. “I hate it, but I always order it at parties to look impressive. I always wanted to be James Bond.”

I sipped my drink again, then held it up as if to toast. “Congratulations,” I said.

He laughed. “Thanks,” he said. “Drink all you want, just remember to morph it off before the hangover. Trust me. Hungover morphing sucks. Hey, I have to schmooze for, like, ten minutes, tops, but I don’t want to abandon you. Mind accompanying me? Won’t be long.”

We went around the pool a few times while Marco stopped to talk to multiple people, most of them blonde and blue eyed. I recognized a few of them, but didn’t have much to say. I kept drinking because I had a glass in my hand, not because I really wanted to get drunk. I had planned on only having one, but as soon as my first glass was empty, I somehow had another one.

I felt fine for the first two cocktails. I was pretty much normal. Then there was the third, which grew a warmth in my chest that I actually really liked. Somewhere deep inside, that scared me, but Marco was still talking to blonde girls and I still had no idea what to say. I kept drinking. The more I sipped, the more it tasted like regular Coke and didn’t bother me.

We kept getting refills every time we passed the bar. Eventually, I even started to join Marco in his conversations. Marco didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he kept laughing at me. I was encouraged, and talked even more.

If I was saying anything embarrassing or weird, I didn’t really care. I felt happy and whole for the first time in ages. It was like all my insides were hugging each other and singing in perfect harmony. It felt like everything bad had melted away. I felt like the back of my teeth were really interesting and I kept running my tongue against them, over and over again, fascinated by the existence of my own mouth.

Eventually, I tugged on Marco’s shirt after the millionth celebrity we talked to left to go talk to some other celebrity. He turned to look at me. “When do I get laid?” I asked, my words sliding off my too thick tongue like sludge.

Marco laughed again. Later, I would realize he was laughing at me, and that he’d been drinking water with olives in it all night. “Anytime you want. Do you realize how famous you are?”

“Yes, unfortunately,” I said, pushing him slightly. He stumbled backwards, surprised, then laughed again.

“It’s pretty easy. You’re the reason half these girls realized they even had tingles down there. Just —” He looked around the room, then put his hand on someone’s shoulder. She turned around. Marco graced her with his most charming grin. “Have you ever wanted to sleep with Jake Berenson?”

I stepped forward. “Hi, I’m Jake Berenson.”

Her eyes went wide. She smiled at me and it was like watching the sun unfold in the night sky.

Shit. What did that even mean? I was drunk. I was very drunk.

I thought, again, of what the world would be like without the Yeerks. Take away the celebrities and the the expensive glowing pool and you had a college party. Me and Marco at UCSB. Me getting too drunk after a fight with Cassie. Marco guiding me around campus, making sure I had fun but still got home okay. Only because of the alcohol, these thoughts didn’t overwhelm me with anger. They came from far away and were mere musings rather than terrible attacks.

Marco had chosen well. This girl looked like Cassie always did when she was played by some actress, which was as close to Cassie as I was ever going to get in Los Angeles. She was tall and thin but shared Cassie’s skin tone, hairstyle, and large brown eyes. It was close enough. It was fine.

We went inside Hannah Dubois’s home. The other party goers weren’t allowed, but Marco had a key. We fucked in some bedroom. I think it was okay. I don’t really have much to compare it against. The only other woman I had slept with was Cassie, and only once. It was after I acquired the anaconda, when I forgave her for giving the Yeerks the morphing cube. It was slow and innocent and beautiful. This was drunk and dirty and necessary.

I never got her name. We separated and I stumbled back into the party, trying to find Marco. I couldn’t. I remembered what he said, vaguely, about how we could morph and how important it was to morph before the hangover. I jerked to the side, vaguely aware that someone was trying to talk to me, but then I realized I didn’t need to find a hidden place to morph. I was Jake Berenson. They all knew that. Everyone knew that. I could just morph, right here, right now, and I didn’t have to worry if the Yeerks would figure out if I was human or not.

I went peregrine falcon, right in the middle of the party. I heard gasps. Some cheering and clapping. Weird, to be morphing in front of others and have it celebrated. Kind of cool. Maybe I—

My head cleared.

I flew away as fast as I could. Fell into the falcon. Flew for a while, flapping my wings harder than I needed, pushing my small and borrowed body until I almost dropped from the sky. I flew down and demorphed and was almost surprised that I could. I hadn’t been thinking about time. I just thought about flying.

I morphed again and found my house. I didn’t have my keys with me. They’d been left at the party, along with the rest of my clothes. I hoped Marco would find them before someone rang up another bill on my behalf.

Distantly, I thought I should be more concerned. I should have been trying to sort through what I’d done during the party and figure out if I needed to do some sort of damage control. Should drive back and find my wallet, my keys. I couldn’t find the energy. Couldn’t care.

I morphed roach and got inside. I demorphed, slow and exhausted. I was mentally drained and physically exhausted.

I picked some clothes off the floor and walked my body to the bathroom. That was a thing people did after they had weird, unsatisfying sex. They showered. I was already naked, anyway. I never wore morphing suits these days. The last time I morphed was, well. The other time Marco threw me into the sea and hoped I didn’t drown.

I turned on the water. Waited for it to heat up. I kept waiting. I sat at the edge of the tub and watched the mirror fog up. Steam blossomed in the small room, hanging in the air like a cloud. I listened to the water fall in the tub, sounding like rain but not. I thought of the jungle. I thought of the Arctic Circle. I thought spending four days sleeping on the floor of a tiny bug fighter, on our way to visit the Hork-Bajir homeworld. I thought of all the places we went, fantastic and breathtaking places, places people spent their whole lives dreaming about, and I thought of the way we spent these little trips with shaking hands and fear quivered hearts.

I picked up my shirt and played with it, turning it inside and out, outside and in. I pulled it over my head, only half-aware that I had never really showered. I put on the rest of my clothes.

I used the sleeve of my shirt to wipe off the thick layer of steam that clung to the mirror. I saw myself, briefly, before the fog crawled back over my face.

The older I got, the more I looked like Tom.

I jerked my body out of the bathroom, hardly registering the shock of cold that shuddered through my body after my time in the steam-filled bathroom. I flung myself through the hall and I opened the door to Tom’s room.

For a moment, I stopped moving. I breathed in deeply and drank in the moment.

This room was forbidden. We did not go into this room. We acted as if this door did not exist, as if the eggshell white wall simply smoothed over the door’s wood grain, as if our bedrooms were oddly focused on the left side of our house. Somewhere deep down, I expected to be chastised. I expected my mother to burst from her and dad’s bedroom and jerk me away by my wrist. No, Jake, no. We don’t do this. We don’t go in there.

But mom was gone. Dad was gone. I’d given them permission to leave me. They had seemed so happy and so relieved on the day they officially moved out. They hadn’t called me since. I didn’t expect to hear from them.

They were afraid of me. They were afraid of what I’d done and what I’d become. We tried, the three of us, we tried to rebuild our family, but we couldn’t. I’d killed their son and their niece and they could not forgive me.

I stepped forward and entered Tom’s inner sanctuary. It was still Tom’s after all. A Yeerk had to maintain. A Yeerk had to play act as their Host, sing their melody and hit every note just right. This was Tom’s room.

It looked like it always had. Of course it did. It was untouched. Tom’s clothes lay strewn across the floor. Some pieces of long forgotten homework were on his desk. I moved myself forward and looked at the date. June 18th, 1999. The day everyone else had saved their parents while mine were lead right into the hands of my infested big brother.

June 18th, 1999. The day I lost the war.

A few months later, he was dead in Rachel’s mouth, stuck in the form of a snake with a Yeerk in his head.

My muscles screamed and I swept my arms across the desk, knocking everything down, disrupting this sanctuary and this sacred place and this shrine to all he had never been. I started screaming. Wordless, at first, but then I started pulling the drawers out of dresser and I found my mantra.

“He died without his body and without his mind!”

I kicked the dresser so hard the cheap wood split against my bare feet. I kicked it again, and again, and again. The shards dug into my skin and tore it to pieces and I didn’t care, couldn’t care. None of it mattered. Nothing I did to my body mattered. Elfangor had taken meaning away from pain, consequences away from mistakes. I existed in a forever healed prison of pristine flesh. I kicked one more time. My toes were already turning black.

“He died without his body and without his mind!”

I pushed his shelving unit down, the one that was next to his desk. Trophies and tidbits fell like rain. I stepped over them without regard to their sharp edges. I grabbed his bed and flipped it over with all my strength. A Playboy slipped from under the mattress and I screamed, deep and guttural, because how dare that Yeerk use my brother’s body for pleasure. How dare he. Rachel’s death was too quick for him. Rachel was dead, Tom was dead, and that posturing, cowardly, stain of shit Yeerk never suffered a slow and painful death.

“He died without his body and without his mind!”

He was supposed to be my best man.

I screamed and screamed, screamed until my throat felt as if it had been grated, and I tore Tom’s room apart into chaos and clutter. I kept yelling even as my throat began to fight against me. I started crying, hot, thick tears streaming down my face, catching on my lips and my tongue. I cried and I yelled until I couldn’t, physically couldn’t, cry or yell anymore.

I sat on the floor in Tom’s room while the sun slowly crawled across my face, peering at me angrily through the curtains I had pulled down. I listened to the shower, still running in the bathroom. Eventually, I got up, shut the door to Tom’s room, and turn the faucet off. It’d been running for hours by then. Something had gotten stuck in the drain and water had piled up in the tub, spilling over the sides. That might mean water damage and expensive repairs. I didn’t care. I had someone working on selling the house for me. Whenever she said she needed repairs, I gave her money. I never seemed to run out of it. My money, my body, my life, all of it, all of it was a meaningless bubble built around my guilt and my crimes.

I walked to my room on torn and bruised feet. I left streaks of blood on the floor. My hands were just as damaged. I fell on my bed, closed my eyes, and slept.

Marco came, eventually, to return my wallet and my keys. I thanked him without moving. My voice came out sick and jagged, raw from traveling through my scream torn throat. Marco hung in the doorway, looking at me.

“You’re not okay,” he said.

I didn’t respond. Didn’t have to.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “God dammit, Jake, you shouldn’t be living alone.”

“I’m eighteen.”

“That’s not the point.” He looked down at his watch. Still selling the same brand. “Fuck. Call time is in, like, fifteen minutes. Fuck.” He looked around my room, then at my hands. “Jake —”

“Marco, if I was going to do something, I would have done it by now,” I said. It was blunt and brash, but it was true, and I wanted him gone.

He shut his eyes, tightly, shaking his head. He looked at his watch. Looked at my hands again. “I don’t —” He sighed. “Fine. Okay.”

He left.

I slept.

**CONTINUE ON TO PART II**


	2. Part II

**JAMIE**

I healed, as much as I ever really did heal. Some months were better than other months, some weeks better than other weeks. Sometimes days were even good. Never great, but good. It helped that I found a new place. Eventually, the real estate agent realized I wanted something manageable rather than a huge sweeping palace like Marco’s mansion. It was a little townhouse inside a gated community, which I actually really liked. There’d been a handful of situations that made me realize even a morph-capable person needed extra security at home, especially if they were the guy on every hate group’s hit list. Some of my neighbors were celebrities, namely TV people, who didn’t quite have Marco’s millions but still suffered the same problems with stalkers. Some were entertainment lawyers or movie executives or even just plain, regular chiropractors. Everyone was nice and adjusted quickly to my presence. These were the sort of people who understood that I didn’t exist to be bothered.

I even got it furnished, mostly. One of my extra rooms was completely bare except for a plugged in electrical cord, but I got stuff for every other space. I had a new bed for my bedroom, a new dresser, and a new desk. I even set up a guest room, just in case someone needed to stay. Maybe Marco might need it, one day. I had an okay looking living room and got the basics for my kitchen. I even had a cool little media set-up in the rec room, like I was some married guy who needed a “man cave.” I really liked it. I ordered all the furniture from the internet and it all came in all these cool little boxes. I had to put everything together myself. It was actually pretty fun.

Marco hadn’t been able to stop by for a couple of weeks. He said his character had a really important arc and he was pretty locked in on set. It was fine by me. He was more excited to see my house than I was to live in it.

He showed up at my door wearing tight jeans, a spandex muscle shirt, and no shoes. I raised an eyebrow at him. “Couldn’t decide on a car?”

He barked a laugh, a little more forcefully than I expected. “Hey, you know me. Jaguar, Humvee, or wings. Alright, let’s look at this place.” He stepped inside, looking around. “Well. It sure is quaint. Did Pa Ingalls build this for you?”

“My ego isn’t big enough to require an entire palace,” I said, slightly defensive.

Marco ran his hand down the back of my couch. “My my, Jacob, you really have mastered the art of matching brown with other shades of brown.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t really care what things look like.”

“Of course, I don’t either, that’s why we hire people. Didn’t I give you a list of decorators to call?”

“You did,” I said. “I didn’t call them.”

“You break my heart,” he said. “You don’t appreciate all the work I do for you. Did you know I had to tell my assistant to look up available designers in the area, make a list, and then wait for her to complete that task? Torture.” He flopped down on my couch, which I thought was a really pretty brown.

He grew strangely quiet, staring distantly at my beige walls. I blinked, a little confused. Why was he suddenly contemplative? He typically put on a cheerful persona around me, as if he were having fun for two. I caught myself frowning at him, but I quickly looked away. Marco didn’t respond well to cooing and sympathy. He hated getting asked if he was okay. Eventually it would come out, all at once, like an overflowing suitcase falling open and spilling all its contents.

I started walking toward my kitchenette. “Do you want something to drink? I have, uh,” I paused for a moment, thinking. “Coke, possibly expired milk, and tap water.”

“Do you have coffee?” he asked, turning his whole body in one motion to look at me. He was now sitting backwards, kneeling on his knees and resting his arms on the back of the couch. “I know you drink coffee. Black, like some kind of monster.”

I frowned again. “Yeah, but it’s 9PM.”

Marco snorted. “You’re worried that a little caffeine might keep me up past my bedtime? Caffeine stopped bothering my bloodstream somewhere around age fourteen. You know, this is the sort of house I’d always imagined you getting if things had gone normal. No Yeerks. No Animorphs. No war. You’d be in a bland, boring house like this one.”

I blinked. “I’m not really sure how to take that.”

“But you wouldn’t have been a homeowner at eighteen, that’s for sure. And I wouldn’t have need for two coastal homes. I have an elevator in my main place, man. An _elevator_. Who has an elevator?”

“I always thought it was weird,” I said. “You only have, like, four floors. Stairs aren’t that big of a deal.”

“Five?” he said, as if he were asking himself a question. “Shit, I forget. The two story atrium messes everything up.”

“Do you not want an elevator?”

“I mean, it brings me directly to my bedroom, which is basically as big as your entire house. I used to think that was so cool, man. That’s why I bought the place. The stupid elevator bringing me right to my giant bedroom that’s basically a studio apartment.”

“I guess that is pretty neat. It’s very— ”

“I got stuck in it, once,” said Marco. He was staring ahead, not meeting my eyes at all. I don’t think he even registered that I’d been speaking. “Some circuit went short. Something. I don’t know. I didn’t have my phone on me and I thought, oh my god, who is going to find me? I have a lot of staff, but I’m gone so often it’s not like they worry if I’m not there.” Marco laughed again, his eyes shining strangely. “How crazy is that? I need a whole team of people to keep my house from caving in. Like, houses aren’t supposed to be that big if just one person is going to live in it, you know? So it’s like my house- my mansion- it’s this big, unnatural thing just daring God and nature to bring it down, and I’ve got to keep a ton of people on my payroll to keep it from rotting away at some unexplored corner and collapsing the whole structure.”

He looked down at his hands, pausing for a moment, considering. Then, he twisted his body to sit on the couch normally. “Anyway, I was in the elevator, my heart thumping in my chest, and then I remembered hey, I’m morph-capable. I went roach and escaped. But for a moment, just one brief, crazy moment, I thought I was in danger. And you know what? I liked it. I missed it.”

I thought of the times I’d come across cultists or extreme specieists and narrowly escaped with nothing but adrenaline in my veins and a warm, beating heart. I nodded. I understood.

Marco didn’t see the gesture. He was still staring ahead with unfocused eyes.

“The show is going really well,” he said, jumping to a new topic without any attempt at a segue. “Really, really well. It’s everything I wanted. It’s a far reaching, critically acclaimed darling of both middle America and the coastal elite. It’s _good_ Jake. It’s not just entertaining sci-fi. It’s _smart_. That’s exactly what I was going for. It’s exactly what I needed to get to the next step. I’m up for an Emmy _and_ a Golden Globe this year. Next stop, Oscar. Should be easy. Really, really, _really_ easy.”

I sat next to him, moving slowly, as if he were a predator who would pounce if my movement was to quick. “Yeah, man,” I said. “You’re actually really talented. Sometimes I forget it’s you in there.”

He looked at me, raising his eyebrows in disbelief. “Really?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said. “I’ve watched every episode. The show is good. You’re good in it.”

He looked at me with a mix of surprise and wonderment, as if I’d said something he’d never expected to hear. Then he looked off into the distance again. “I was never interested in acting before,” he said. “I don’t think I ever would have been. I know I wouldn’t have survived coming up as some short, Latino nobody. But I’m here now, and I mostly get the parts I want, and I’m good at it. What would I do without this life? Be some dumb IT guy? I’m better off.”

“You really did take advantage of the situation,” I said. It wasn’t much of a response, but Marco wasn’t looking for advice or validation. He was rambling because he was sorting through something.

He fell silent for a moment, staring off into the distance, so still it felt unnatural. Then, suddenly, he turned to me. “You should christen this house.”

“I’m sorry?” I asked.

“Christen. You know. Bang it out in every room.”

“You are way too concerned about my sex life.”

“It’s fucking great, man. I did it with Cecilia. Then I told Lydia I’d never done and we did all over again. My place has a _lot_ of rooms, so we had to get very creative, but you’ve got have a _least_ three bedrooms here. You could get a lot done.”

“I’m good.”

“C’mon, Jake,” said Marco, jumping up off the couch. “Just come out with me. Let’s drop the whole World Wide Superstar and his sidekick Uncomfortably Serious Boy thing and just be teens. Let’s go to a club. Loosen up. Drink a little. Pick up chicks.”

“We tried that once,” I said flatly.

“That was—” Marco sighed. “You weren’t in the right place. I should have seen that. But just look at you now! You’re a whole new woman, full of confidence and self-assurance. Just look at your charming home! _Love_ the mass produced print of sepia toned flowers hanging above the television. Really gives the place a real ‘I’m stuck in this doctor’s waiting room’ feel. Very dentist.”

My eyes flicked toward the art in question. I thought the flowers were really nice. “Stop making fun of my house.”

“I will if you go party with me.”

I sighed. “It’s really not my scene. It—”

“Be a normal guy for just one night!” said Marco, his voice rising. “One night! Just try it out!”

I opened my mouth, but then I really stopped and took him in. He looked pitiful and strange in just his morphing suit of fitted jean-leggings and a too tight biking top, as if he’d been stripped down of all the bells and whistles that made him Marco Ruiz-Champlin, Golden Globe nominee. He was agitated and fidgeting in a way I hadn’t seen since his dad announced his marriage to Nora. He could barely look at me while he talked, preferring to stare at the wall, because sometimes he couldn’t say personal things to actual faces, just walls. I knew something had been bothering him, but now I saw that something was very wrong. Something dark was settling inside him and he thought a night out with me could keep it at bay.

I knew the feeling. He’d been there for me when I needed that night, and now it was my turn to be there for him. I sighed. I ran my hand through my hair, then let my arms fall to my sides, exasperated.

“We’re underage,” I pointed out. “Where are we going to go that will serve us?”

Marco stared at me for a moment with a blank, confused face, as if he couldn’t register what I’d just said. Then, he burst out laughing.

 

 

We took a brief trip back to Marco’s place to get him some real clothes, and then we were on our way to downtown L.A. We ended up at some place called Tonic. I hated it. It was way too noisy. Yeah, the music was loud at Hannah Dubois’s party, but this was a whole new level. The music was trapped within concrete. It banged and rattled against walls, angry and bored with no where else to go. It compounded on itself. I could feel the vibrations with my whole body. This was torture.

Marco took one look at my face and laughed. He said something.

“What?” I asked, annoyed. He said something else and I crossed my arms, glaring at him. He sighed and took out his phone, gesturing toward me. I took my own phone out of my pocket and saw that I had a text from him. I was confused for a moment, but then I remembered his palm pilot could take thought commands. He didn’t need to type to text. That’s actually pretty cool. I made a mental note to talk to Ax.

_I’m gonna get a VIP booth. I’ll get us some Goose and some hotties. Relax._

He motioned for me to stay, then disappeared into the crowd. I was happy to wait. Nothing about this club was appealing to me and I was in no rush to explore its depths.

Marco reappeared after a few minutes and pulled me toward some area with couches. It was guarded by a bouncer. I nodded at him as we entered and he barely registered my existence.

There were already two other people in the booth. One girl, one boy. They didn’t really look alike, yet still seemed completely identical. They both had the same body type, style, and demeanor. Once everyone was settled, I realized that Marco fit right in.

I looked down at my sleeve. I was just wearing a flannel shirt and slacks. Nothing fancy. No jewelry or anything. I was also bigger than anyone else in the booth, both in height and girth. I was suddenly far too aware of my body and I fidgeted in my seat.

“Hi,” said the boy. He smiled at me in this really weird way, as if his presence was little secret we were sharing. I gave him a stiff nod.

A girl appeared and picked up the booze bottle and a glass. Marco shook his head at her and waved her away. She nodded, put a hand on his shoulder, and said something I couldn’t quite hear. He grinned at her and she left. Then, he poured the vodka into a glass himself, filling it halfway full and then some. I frowned at him. He filled up the rest of the glass with a nearby carafe of orange juice and looked up at me, catching my eye and shrugging.

I pressed my lips together. Marco and Rachel had started drinking at the end of the war, often disappearing from the Hork-Bajir Valley with no explanation and coming back in bird-morph, catching each other’s eyes and giggling. I let it pass. I had other things to care about and it gave Rachel something to do. He was careful about it back then and he was careful about it now. He was young, rich, attractive, and having a lot of fun. I never thought, once, that he’d ever had a problem, or would form one. Marco was a lot of things, but he was not an addict. He was too smart. He’d catch himself before he got that far.

That’s why it was so disturbing to see him drinking so much, so fast, so publicly. Everyone had a tiny computer in their pockets these days. Palms that could record sound, video, take pictures. Marco could easily damage his otherwise pristine reputation just by being next to a bottle.

I leaned forward to go sit next to him, but the boy suddenly put a hand on my thigh. I looked at him, surprised. It’s okay if he wanted my attention, but that seemed like a weird way to get it.

I looked at him questioningly. He smiled. “I’m Jamie.”

“Jake,” I said, feeling conflicted. I guess I cared about my reputation, too, in my own way. I didn’t want people to think I was aloof, so I tried hard to give anyone who wanted it my full attention. I didn’t want to leave this Jamie feeling ignored.

He smiled at me. “Jake? That’s so weird, to think of you as a Jake. To me, you’re always Jacob Berenson.”

“Jake’s fine,” I said, watching Marco drain half his glass in one go. The girl who was next to him cheered and then poured him another booze-heavy cocktail.

I realized Jamie had never removed his hand from my thigh. I stood up to remove it for him, and he stood up too. “You need a drink,” he said, leaning toward the table and grabbing two glasses.

“I’m good.”

Jamie either didn’t hear or didn’t care for my refusal. He poured vodka into the glasses, then covered the vodka with soda water from another carafe. He straightened and handed me the resulting cocktail. I suppressed a sigh and took it from him, nodding. “Thanks,” I said.

He stared at me. I sipped the concoction. It tasted like seltzer water that burned and had the slightest hint of rotted fruit. That didn’t seem to satisfy him and he kept staring.

“I’m going to talk to Marco now,” I announced, and immediately turned and left him alone. Even I had my limits with fans.

I sat next to Marco, who was attempting to fill another glass. His coordination was already shaky. Marco was short and skinny, a mix that didn’t bode well for his alcohol tolerance. I put a hand on his, pushing it away from the bottle. “Hey, slow down.”

Marco laughed. “Okay, dad,” he said. Then, he leaned forward and did the club version of whispering at me in a low voice, which was just getting very close to my ear and projecting as normal. “You know, I’ve never done this,” he said with a vodka heavy tongue. “Gotten my own VIP booth. I always just kind of show up, have two drinks, collect my appearance fee and move on.”

“Really?” I said.

“Yeah. Do you like Jamie?”

“He’s fine,” I said tersely.

“You don’t like any other girls and Cassie’s kind of butch so, hey, wishful thinking, started wondering if you and I were in the same boat.”

“What boat?”

“The U.S.S. Queerer Than A Three Eyed Unicorn.”

I blinked. “You’re gay?”

“Not quite,” he said with a sloppy grin. “I’m an equal opportunist. I’ll take Jamie if you don’t want ‘im. I’ll take ‘em both!”

Honestly, that made more sense than anything else I’d heard that night, but it wasn’t the time or place to dwell on the revelation. “Did you _hire_ these guys?” I asked, incredulous.

Marco laughed, a drunk and wild sound. “God no! I just asked if they wanted to join the Animorphs tonight. Jake, these are the perks! High rolling at the club! Men and women at our beck and call! Expensive vodka that’s smooth like water and you can drink all you want because we can reset our bodies! This is the good life!”

“Yeah,” I said, dryly. “Real great. Hey, man, let’s get out of here. Do something else. Let’s go flying.”

“Oh hell no!” said Marco. He pointed at me with a wavering finger. “You owe me. I had your back when you needed this.”

“That was —”

“Different?” Marco asked, incredulous. His words and movements were becoming increasingly blurred. I didn’t know much about booze, but I knew the alcohol to orange juice ratio wasn’t supposed to be 3:1 and consumed in rapid succession. “How? You needed your best friend and I was there, just like I’m there every — every fucking _time_. You call, I answer! You need, I give! Me? Gotta beg on my knees to get you to a forty-five minute lunch with Hollywood’s hottest producer. Is this why you wanna leave? Because — because I called in one favor, one time, and that’s all you can manage?”

I ran my hands down my face. Drunk Marco was just as manipulative as sober Marco, only he used blunt force rather than subtle machinations. “Okay,” I said. “We stay.”

Marco pointed at the abandoned glass Jamie had poured for me. “You drink,” he said, mimicking my tone.

I sighed and grabbed the glass, holding it up. “I drink.”

I really did drink, but very slowly, and with a metabolism and body much more equipped for alcohol than Marco’s. I nursed my vodka soda while Marco and his new friends downed the entire bottle of Grey Goose and then ordered more. They talked and flirted and I watched them, detached. Marco quickly got himself to a point where I could have left and he wouldn’t have noticed, but I wanted to make sure he was okay. A few of his friends started to trickle in, most of them famous, all of them already drunk. They would try to talk to me, but I wasn’t interested at all. If they wanted to run to the media and call me lofty and self-involved, fine. I was only here to make sure Marco got home without drawing a paparazzi parade. None of these people had his best intentions in mind.

Eventually, I had to take my eyes off of him to pee. When I returned to the VIP booth, he was gone. No one could tell me where he went. I searched the club, and still couldn’t find him. It was a relief. It meant he had morphed and gone home, meaning I was finally free to go back to my own place filled with sensible lighting, nice muted browns, and silence.

I did make sure Marco had settled up with the club before leaving, however. I left a _very_ generous tip on Marco’s behalf.

My ears rang viciously the entire cab ride home. I had to morph to repair the tinnitus. Between morphing and the long night, I crashed pretty hard. I woke up at around 2 PM, which was excessive even for me.

I shuffled my way through my morning routine. Shower, coffee, breakfast. I flopped down on my couch and turned on the television, flipping aimlessly in the hopes of finding something interesting.

I quickly found E! playing a clip of Marco stumbling through the streets of L.A., missing one shoe and partly morphed to something not yet distinguishable.

He didn’t waste any time on the damage control. He was on Oprah just a few days later, talking openly about his struggles as a war veteran and how he lost control that night. Most of what he said was bullshit and had nothing to do with his actual struggles. He said he was invited out to the club and hadn’t intended on drinking, but he just couldn’t shake off the nightmare he’d had the night before. Oprah nodded with sympathy, tears in her eyes, and she thanked him for his sacrifices. They made the whole episode about soldiers and PTSD. Cassie even sent in some video. I wondered why he hadn’t reached out to me, but then I found a few missed calls on my palm. He’d left increasingly agitated voice mails that were both apologetic and demanding.

In the end, it didn’t matter if I’d been on the episode or not. It had the desired effect. The episode was a smash. Marco was called brave by every media outlet in America. Marco had, once again, made a terrible situation beneficial to himself.

Only he missed a pretty important detail.

The paparazzi started following me as soon as I left my gated community. Security tried to do something about them, but they just kept coming. They took photo after photo of me, of my current shape, of my facial expressions, and my body language. I’d been really quiet on the media front and my absence was dissected and discussed on every show, talk and radio. Footage from Esplin’s trial aired over and over and over again while people commented on what it all meant. Everyone was suddenly an expert on how I was _really_ doing. Targeted headlines appeared on every magazine cover. “What Happened To Jacob Berenson?” “The Truth Behind The Animorphs’ Leader.” “Jacob Berenson: Before And After.”

I stopped leaving the house. I got my assistant to deliver anything I needed. I kept my shades down. Didn’t even turn on lights most days. Just existed in a new and empty home, occasionally lit by persistent sunbeams that pushed through imperfect blinds. I asked for light blocking curtains. They came, but I never put them up.

Marco left me a voice mail almost every day.

“Okay, you know I’m sorry, you _know_ that, and I really want to fix this. I’m thinking Saturday Night Live. I know it’s kind of daunting, but those guys are geniuses and know how to write for pretty much anyone’s style. You’d kill it, Jake, I know you would. I know you’re hilarious. You’ve been my straight-man since we were six! One SNL appearance, man, and this whole thing stops. No one will talk about your — situation if you participate in some legendary sketch. We’re talking Wayne’s World. We’re talking van down by the river. We’re talking Lunch Lady Land. We can do it, dude. We’ll shut everyone up. Get back to me ASAP.”

“Jake, my man, you gotta help me out here. I know this whole thing has got to be killing you. Alright, SNL is maybe a lot to ask. I get it. It’s literally live. Maybe we go light and easy. Just do the talk show circuit! David asks if you’re doing okay, you say yes, tell some cute story about your life. We’ll make something up. I’ve got writers on staff. Man, you can’t just _let_ this happen. It sucks, but you have to get out there, and you have to fix it. People depend on your image. Call me back soon.”

“Yep, hey, it’s me again, good ol’ Marco. Did you hear what happened to him? He went completely insane, kept leaving his friend messages even if he knew they all get deleted. Completely bonkers, that Marco. Jake, if you’re listening, just call me back. Okay? We can talk this out. We can figure something out. Hell, at this point, just having someone write some letter on your behalf would be _something_. New York Times would eat it up. You just have to get yourself out there. Please, call me back.”

“Sometimes I call you just to see if you’ll pick up. Then you don’t. Just checking in with my favorite voice mail message to give myself my daily dose of humility. Don’t worry, Marco. Not even your childhood best friend and war buddy gives a shit. Anyway, thanks for the reminder. Have fun with your busy day.”

“Hey. I’m sorry. I’m just — I’m sorry. I hope you’re listening. I’m sorry.”

**SARAH**

Eventually, I had to leave my house.

I had been using a grocery delivery service, but then they changed their location and no longer served my area. The next day, my manager called me and said he’d found another job. I didn’t blame him. I didn’t give him much work. I’d already lost the assistant. I had a pile of mail a mile long, probably important stuff I should sort through on my own, but I didn’t really care enough.

There was no one else on my team I could ask to get necessities, so I had to start shopping for myself. Leaving again for the first time in two months was incredibly nerve wracking, but I guess it really did make me feel better. Not good. Not even okay. But better.

A few days later, I met Sarah.

She was just a check out clerk at Albertsons. She worked late nights, which is typically when I went to the store. Most of the time, the late night cashiers were kind of weird, and I guess made sense. You’d have to be a little strange to like working at a grocery store at 1 AM. Sarah wasn’t off putting, though. She was actually really normal, and she was easily the cutest girl who worked there.

Sarah was uncomplicated and kind. She didn’t seem to be phased by who I was, and not just because she was in Santa Barbara and bored by my presence. She recognized I was a person before a hero. We both liked the Lakers and hated the Celtics. We both didn’t really understand the appeal of Seinfield but liked Sabrina the Teenage Witch. We both thought Batman was the greatest superhero. I really liked her.

She asked me out for coffee one night. I said yes.

I called her a few days later and asked if she’d like dinner. She would. We went to dinner. We did that again. The second time, I asked if she wanted to come inside. She did. It was nice. It was really nice. Cassie was so long ago and that girl in between was something I’d rather forget. Sarah was sweet and present and simple. She kissed like she was sure of it and made love with no hesitations.

She stayed the night. In the morning, she jumped into the shower. I silently thanked Marco for his caustic but necessary advice about getting a maid. If I hadn’t, I think she would have ran away from my place as soon as she could. Instead, she stuck around, slept in my freshly turned down bed and rinsed off in my immaculate bathroom. I made a mental note to give the maid a little extra this week. She deserved it.

She was currently drying her hair with my hair dryer, bemused. “I still can’t believe you have one of these,” she said.

I screwed up my nose. “I hate having wet hair,” I said. “I used to kick and scream every time I had to take a bath until my mom taught me how to dry my hair really fast.”

She laughed. “That’s actually very, very cute. Wow, you even have moisturizer in here. You’re almost halfway to having a decent, functional bathroom! Most bachelors just have one of those black, tiny Wal-mart combs and a half finished beer next to the toilet.”

I shrugged. “I get really dry skin. That’s prescription level stuff.”

“You really know how to turn a girl on,” she said, laughing. “Tell me more about your flakey snake skin.”

“Me having snake skin is a whole new conversation,” I said. I didn’t think it was all that funny, but she laughed really hard anyway. I liked that.

Then she said- “If only you had bobby pins. My hair won’t stay back in a bun without them, and I end up looking like some stressed out librarian.”

I chuckled a little, then grew quiet.

“Yeah,” I said, slowly. “A sexy librarian.”

She laughed, again, and this time it was less endearing. “Awww, you’re so cute.”

I rolled some details around in my mind. My team dropping off one by one. The sudden and nonsensical change in delivery zones. A person like Sarah working the graveyard shift.

I sat up on my bed, watching her carefully. “Hey,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. “Do you know Marco?”

“Mar-” she turned to me and blinked. “ _The_ Marco? That one?”

“Yeah,” I said, suppressing an urge to roll my eyes. “That Marco.”

“You know, it’s a funny story,” she said, turning back to the mirror and fluffing up her hair. “So, like, I’m kind of an actress? Not a super successful one, but I get by. It’s mostly a lot of nerd roles. I guess I have that kind of face. Still pretty enough for TV, but just not leading lady pretty. Comedy pretty. Money is money, though, right? I think I want to grow the college fund before actually going to school. You know, keep auditioning while I have this face, save up money, then sort of coast through my college years in my mid-twenties, living off my savings. Anyway, I had a bit part on Herald of Arms, some random victim in an episode, and Marco kept talking to me when we were on set.”

“I’ve seen every episode of his show,” I said slowly. “I’ve never seen you.”

She shrugged. “They cut the scene. It happens. I still got paid, so whatever, right? I only cried a little. Twenty minutes, tops. Anyway, Marco personally called to apologize. He said my performance made a huge effect on him and that he’d push for me to be cast again. It was really sweet of him.”

“That’s Marco,” I said, dryly. “Sweetest guy I’ve ever met.”

She blinked, then forced an awkward giggle. “Something about that seems sarcastic. I guess you’d know more than I do.”

“Why do you work at the store so late?” I asked, studying her closely. “That seems weird, for an actress.”

“Ah,” she said, running a hand through her freshly dried hair and blushing just a little. “It’s a mix of different things. There’s never an audition at night, right? It means I don’t always get a ton of sleep, but I manage. Plus, someone at a party gave me this awesome hint that Lauren Gifford — she’s this super well known casting lady — Lauren Gifford lives in Santa Barbara and shops at night and that’s how she discovered Hannah Dubois.”

“Sure,” I said. “Did you happen to talk to this person for more than two hours?”

“I don’t think so?” said Sarah, looking at me strangely.

“You haven’t seen Lauren Gifford yet, have you,” I said with a flat tone.

“No,” said Sarah.

“But you saw me,” I said.

She smiled. “Right,” she said. She put her shirt on, leaned over, and kissed me. “Way better.”

She left. I went to my dresser and rummaged around until I found some cycling clothes that would work. I always made sure I had a clean morphing suit that fit as it should, just in case. I’d been caught without one too many times. I threw it on and went up to my balcony. Out of habit, I made sure no one was watching. Then, I went falcon.

I knew where Marco’s show was filmed. I’d met him there once or twice, when I gave in to his incessant requests for outings. The building was sealed off and locked. I had to demorph from the falcon and remorph a roach, but I found the energy easily.

I was angry, very angry, and the resulting adrenaline made me invincible.

I demorphed as soon as I was in. When I got my eyesight back I realized no one had seen me, at all. Everyone was deathly quiet and watching the set. The mood was somber. An actress was talking to Marco intently, and Marco had tears streaming down his face. I knew their characters were pretty involved. They must be breaking up.

I walked forward, making sure I was in Marco’s line of sight. As soon as he saw me, he broke character in the middle of a line, and immediately walked toward me. “What happened,” he asked, his entire demeanor changing in the blink of an eye. Gone was the wilted body language of a freshly broken heart. It had been replaced, entirely, by a soldier who knew something was out of place and very, very wrong.

Yeah, it was dramatic, coming to him so suddenly, but when Marco was determined you had to make things horrifically clear. Especially these days, when he was so spoiled by Hollywood and fame. I had to make things final.

“You’re done,” I said in a low voice.

He stopped walking and looked at me incredulously. “With — what? Jake, what are you —”

I stepped forward, lowering my voice even more. “Sarah.”

Marco’s face softened in recognition. Then, his eyes flicked toward the people crowded around us. His gaze caught on someone who was fiddling with their palm pilot. “You,” he said, pointing. “Get off the set and don’t come back. _Now_.”

“I wasn’t —”

“You leave of your own volition or I will make you.”

The offender stared at Marco with an open mouth, then stormed away. Not only was Marco an A-list heavyweight with clout and influence, he was a legendary warrior. People didn’t argue with him. That was one of my many issues with Marco.

Marco turned back to me, sighing. He rubbed his face with both hands, then looked back up at me. “Let’s go somewhere private, Jake, come on. We’ll talk it out. These people have places to be, things to do. You can’t just halt filming like this, man.”

“No talking it out!” I said, my voice raising. “No smoothing it over, no finesse, no puppet strings. You are _done_!”

At my last few words, Marco shrank from me.

It was like when I yelled at him during the war and he knew he deserved it. He jerked backwards, and his body went small and compressed, almost as if I had struck a physical blow.

Marco Ruiz-Champlin shrank from me, in front of everyone on set, and that made him very, very upset.

He straighted back up.

“I’m done what, giving a shit?” he sneered. He stepped backwards and held his hands out wide, as if presenting the entire room. “Do you want to know why Jacob Berenson, Hero of Earth, has graced us with his presence today? Hmm? Because I keep trying to give him someone, something, _anything_ to care about—” His voice caught and choked and a tear rolled down his eye. “Not now, tear stick!” He wiped at his cheek. “Fuck!”

“You found job offers for my staff,” I said. “And then you somehow got an entire business to change location. That’s one thing. Yeah, I get it. I get why you’d do that. It’s fucked up, but I get it. But to meet some actress, cut her out of your show so that I wouldn’t recognize her, and then trick her into working at some dead end fucking _Albertsons_ —”

“Oh, boo-fucking-hoo, an eighteen-year-old works as a cashier. Why are you yelling at me? You liked her! You took her home!”

I stepped forward, my face hot with rage. I was shaking. I’d gone from keeping my voice low to full on shouting. “How the _hell_ do you know I took her home!”

“Everyone, take ten,” came an unfamiliar voice. People started filtering away from the set, giving Marco and me privacy. Our eyes were locked with each other. We waited for the staff to clear out.

“Marco,” I said, my voice once again low and steady. “Why do you know I took Sarah home.”

Marco raises his hands up, shaking his head, then let his arms fall to his side in exasperation. “Because I check in on you. Jesus, Jake. We all worry about you. Everyone.”

I ran my hands down my face. “Marco, this isn’t the war,” I said. “If you want to make elaborate plans and strategize, talk to Washington. They’d love to have you. Don’t manipulate your friends.”

“Are you a friend,” said Marco, quick and biting.

“I’m someone whose life is not your plaything.”

I was standing as tall as I could be, with my shoulders pushed back and my head perfectly centered. Marco looked up at me with a mix of anger and disbelief. He opened his mouth to speak, and then another tear fell down his face. He rolled his eyes, took a few awkward steps forward, and fell into a nearby chair. He blinked a few times. “Fine.”

I relaxed, just a little. I was furious with Marco, but it was really hard to have this conversation with him when he was crying. I hated seeing Marco cry, even if the tears were fake and not technically meant for me. He had to have known how upsetting I found it.

I sighed. “You _are_ my friend, Marco. That’s why you need to stop trying to fix my life,” I said, still firm, but not as angry.

“I’m just trying to help you,” he mumbled, wiping at his eyes again.

“With what?” I said.

Marco closed his eyes. “Come on, Jake. You were bad before, but after Visser One’s trial, you just — sure, you go out more than you used to. You have months where you walk and talk and leave the house. You almost sound like yourself. You even gave up on Rachel’s grave.”

I stiffened. “How long have you been spying on me?”

“A long time.” He opened his eyes and leaned forward. “I thought you were getting better. But then sometimes you just — stop. And you’re worse than you’ve ever been. I just want someone to be around for you. I —”

He sniffed and wiped at his eyes. “I’m not crying because of this, I’m crying because I just shot menthol into my eyes.”

“I believe you.”

“I’m very manly.”

“I know.”

“That’s why I need the tear stick. Because of my emotional detachment due to aforementioned manliness.”

“So manly.”

“As long as we’re on the same page.” He sniffed again and I pulled up a chair next to him.

The momentum was gone. It’s not that I forgave Marco, it’s just that my rage was shrinking down and leaving me with a clearer head. I think it was the same for him. We both were prone to flying off the handle when heated, and we both were sensible enough to quickly recover.

“Sorry I embarrassed you in front of your crew,” I said.

Marco shrugged. “They live for gossip. This was probably the highlight of their year. Besides, last week Harold puked on set. This is no where near as embarrassing.”

I raised an eyebrow. “The guy who plays your brother?”

“Yep. He’s a complete disaster. Super into the nightlife. He’s gotten so unreliable we’re probably going to off his character. Can’t believe I slept with him.”

I widened my eyes. “You slept with your TV brother?” I said, leaning toward Marco just a bit.

Marco looked at me sideways. “That bothers you more than his alcoholism?”

I laughed softly and stared at the floor. A silence fell between us, heavy and impatient. Both of us wanted the conversation to be over, but both of us knew it wasn’t.

Eventually, I sighed and shifted my weight.

“Look, I know I didn’t come out of the war . . . normal,” I said, quietly. “My parents talked to me about it. And I know it gets bad, sometimes. Really bad. But I always come back around.”

Marco snorted derisively. “Denial’s not just a river in Egypt.”

I shot him a glare. “I get up. I communicate. I answer calls. I smile. I laugh. It’s enough.”

Marco looked at me. “No, it’s not. You have to let go of the Pool ship. It happened. It’s over. Done. Do you think Rachel and Tom rest easier because you feel guilty? They don’t, because they’re dead. They are dead, and you are not, and you deserve a healthy life. Get some help. They make meds for this. Hell, I’ve been on a few.”

“Been?”

“Not letting you turn this around on me.”

I studied him for a moment, then sighed. “I’ve been to a few guys. It’s just never clicked.”

“Because you don’t let it.”

“Maybe,” I said, wringing my hands. “But they always act so surprised when I start talking. Too many people have perceptions about me. Even therapists.”

Marco leaned forward, almost as if he was excited. “Then keep trying. I can find you someone.”

I looked at Marco sharply. “I’ll figure it out on my own. You need to stop interfering with my life.”

Marco opened his mouth, then closed it. He sniffed. Then, he took a deep breath, stood up, and looked at me squarely. “Alright. Okay. I promise. I’m done.”

“Good,” I said. I stood up and went toward the door.

“Jake?” said Marco, just as the door was opening and people were filing back in.

I paused and turned around to look at him.

Marco gave me a smile that was small and twisted and sad. “Good luck with being happy.”

—--

When I was home, I found Sarah’s earrings on my bedside table.

I contacted her, and saw her one more time. I gave back the jewelery and explained some of what had happened. Not that Marco had been manipulating my life, just that Lauren Gifford had moved to a different city, and that she should get a coffee shop or waitressing job with easier hours. I also told her I wasn’t looking for a relationship. She understood. We didn’t see each other again.

I don’t know why I went out with Sarah in the first place, really. I think, on some level, Marco was right. I really did need a reason to get out of bed in the morning, and maybe I thought that reason could be a person. A person wasn’t going to fix everything inside of me, but it was she would be a start. In the end, I don’t think we would have gotten very far. I would have had to peel every layer of myself in front of her, one by one, and she was too young and too sweet to survive the process.

At least Marco made it right with Sarah. She ended up having a three episode arc on _Herald of Arms_. She even got to make out with Marco. That was more than a little disturbing to watch. I asked him why he made out with my ex on national television, and then all of a sudden he was like “Can’t tell the writers what to do, man. You gotta trust them. They want what they want.”

Right.

I got a new assistant and we sorted through my pile of messages. The government had, apparently, been contacting me about training an anti-terrorism group to use morphing technology. I was actually sort of interested, which surprised even me. In the past, it would have made me feel too egotistical and bloated to try and teach anyone anything about morphing. I was no expert, after all. I never had training of my own, just dumb luck and idiotic bravery. I didn’t even have a high school degree. Who was I to teach? But no one else on Earth really had the kind of experience the Animorphs did. Between myself, Cassie, and Marco, I had the most free time.

I also finally decided to hire a security team. Keeping myself exposed was becoming less and less appealing.

I even went to a few parties held by Marco. Most of them were pretty schmoozy and were all about Marco introducing all his influential friends to one and another and hoping it lead to favors, but at least they were fun. One time, Cassie and her boyfriend were there. He seemed like a solid guy and they looked really happy together. I can never remember that guy’s name, though. Richard? Marco says I do it on purpose. He’s right.

They made the _Tom Berenson_ movie. I didn’t see it, but I made sure they gave my parents a _lot_ of money to keep the family quiet. It won twelve Oscars, including Best Picture.

I still woke up certain days feeling empty and raw and like everything inside me had been carved away, but I managed to get through my life. People still looked at me with concern and pity, but not nearly as often. Sometimes, I even felt sparks of excitement or joy. When I visited dog parks. When Marco and I would hang out and it would feel, briefly, like old times. When I drank a strawberry soda that actually tasted like strawberries.

Or when Menderash-Postill-Fastill handed me the keys to space and for the first time in almost four years, I didn’t just feel a spark— I felt a flame.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic would not exist without [Cavatica](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Cavatica/pseuds/Cavatica), who not only beta'd my feverish first draft, but also accidentally gave me the prompt for this fic in conversation. She also listened as I talked out plot and helped gently steer me away from crazier ideas, like a weird assassination attempt in the middle of this AMC drama of a story. Though guys it would have been cool. I am telling you.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! Please hang out with me! I'm at lilacsolanum.tumblr.com and I love friendship.


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